Freewind
by Alphabet Pie
Summary: Short oneshot. An inmate escapes from Kingdom Prison. Vexen, Larxene and Marluxia.


Somewhere, an alarm sounded. It reverberated off the walls, down the cold corridors. It shook the hearts of all the inmates, all the staff of the Kingdom Prison.

Many of the employees had never heard it before. None of the inmates had.

It was the alarm to say that someone had escaped, and nobody ever escaped from this place.

Vexen Caulford sighed as his intercom crackled to life. More incompetent babble from more incompetent flunkies. It really wasn't what he needed right now.

"Sir! One of the inmates escaped!"

"I should think that was obvious." Vexen drawled. "Which inmate does this happen to be?"

"The data's coming over right now, sir,"

"A name."

"Sorry, sir?"

"The name of the escapee,"

"Oh, sir, sorry sir-"

"Stop babbling. Who is it?"

"Freewind, sir, Larxene Freewind,"

Vexen's computer clicked as it received the final stats on the runaway. He switched off the intercom. As if he even needed to waste his breath on that useless conversation.

Larxene Freewind.

To be honest, Vexen wasn't surprised. She was ruthless and intelligent, under life imprisonment for the murder of 37 men. She was only twenty-six. She'd escaped other prisons before for more minor crimes, and the bets had always been on about how long she'd stay here.

He checked out her profile, not that he needed to. He memorised the stats of every inmate as soon as they arrived.

"We have security over the entire premises. No sightings so far," Came a message over the intercom. Useless men, Vexen thought. By now she would obviously out of the site, on the run again.

"Do you think they'll find her?"

Zexion Summer, Vexen's long-suffering colleague.

"It's unlikely. She's too intelligent to be caught now," Vexen sighed, shuffling a few papers on his desk.

"It's an amazement she hasn't escaped before," Zexion commented, leaning over Vexen's shoulder.

"She was merely waiting for the right time. They thought they had her in the bag and relaxed security around her just enough for her to sneak out,"

"What about her partner? Is he still on the run?"

"The Assassin? The police have never been able to catch him. Nobody even knows his name,"

"They were hoping to find out from Freewind," It was stating the obvious, but Vexen was tolerant of it from Zexion.

"Useless. She's his second in command. She'd never break so easily,"

The Assassin.

Larxene closed the door with a click, and darkness enshrouded her.

Just how he liked it.

Her eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom, and she could just make out his silhouette.

"You took your time. Have a seat."

She fumbled a little finding the chair, but she sat with reasonable elegance.

"Stupid people had me under 24-hour surveillance," She grumbled once the silence exceeded more than a few minutes. Her companion nodded.

"What about the governor? Did you see him?"

"I have everything," She held out a little black memory stick, and he graciously picked it out of her hands. A screen flat on the table in front of them lit up with white words on a black background, and the light gave just enough illumination for Larxene to see his features in the gloom.

They were perfect. And yet here he hid, tucked away from the world, isolated from everybody. Some day, he'd said, when their plan was complete, they'd be able to live normally, out in the sun. He'd never accepted an if into the equation, but Larxene had always secretly hoped that if things didn't turn out the way they'd planned, they'd at least be able to escape together to some backwater country and set up camp there.

The Assassin, as he was always called, plugged the memory stick into a port at the side of the table, and a dialogue box opened up as the computer scanned the stick for any potential tracking devices, bugs or viruses. It turned up nothing, so he leaned over and opened a browser on the touch screen with a slender finger. A list of files with an assortment of extensions popped up and he double tapped the first. It was a photograph with a caption.

"Vexen Caulford," He murmured, running three fingers down the flat face. "Perfect,"

Larxene leaned over.

"So that's what he looks like," She commented. "He's kind of old,"

"He's thirty four," He had opened up the list of stats that Larxene had obtained by hacking into the prison system. The next file was a text document, and he skimmed through it. "A child prodigy. At eleven his IQ matched mine. He finished the school syllabus at fifteen with top marks in almost every subject. It's a pity that he decided to work for the law in the end. He'd make the perfect criminal," He dragged the little windows into the corner of the screen and opened up a few more, plans of the Kingdom Prison complex. On one floor, there was a little red cross.

"That's Pyro," Larxene informed him.

He shut down every window and turned the computer off at the switch. Then he threw the memory stick at the wall so hard that it smashed on impact.

Larxene blinked.

"Intelligent," He muttered. "Let's go,"

"Hey," Larxene said as he stood and effortlessly made his way to a corner of the room. She never used his name, which was a pity, because it was as beautiful as he was.

Marluxia LeVine.

But nobody ever said it. To all of their co-workers, all their clients, he was just the Assassin. That way he was impossible to track, just a phantom name at the head of a phantom operation.

He led her away to another room where a sleek car was waiting in its usual silence in front of a garage door. He held open the door of the passenger seat for her before slipping in the other side. Sunglasses. Tinted windows. Black leather interior.

The black car slid away, silently, through the door that opened just a fraction of a second before they were about to make impact, and then closed again immediately.

He put his foot down on the accelerator and the car was hurled into breakneck speed, down a desolate road with twisting, hairpin bends and then finally into a main road. Only then, surrounded by other cars, did he slow.

Somewhere behind them, there was the sound of an explosion, and even reclining in the car, Larxene felt the tremors of the bomb in her bones.

"How unsubtle," Marluxia commented, eyes never parting from the road. "Then again, it was always their way,"

He leaned over and pressed a button on the dashboard and it peeled outwards, revealing a whole array of computer screens, keyboards and information. His fingers danced across one of the touch screens, and an amiable face appeared on the side of the windscreen.

"Reporting," The man said.

"You can expect us at the rondevous point in an hour,"

"Very well, sir. Shall I put the kettle on?"

"That would be excellent. Thank you,"

The communication signal shut down and they drove on.


End file.
